


Reptile Room

by Triscribe



Series: Alternate Living Arrangements [14]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Harry Potter & Ron Weasley Friendship, Parseltongue, give that boy some more snakes!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28524675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triscribe/pseuds/Triscribe
Summary: “Ssstupid humanss,”the adder fussed.“Feed one hatchling too much, too fasst, while the other wasstess away-”“I don’t starve,” Harry insisted, one corner of his mouth curling up in a fond grin.
Series: Alternate Living Arrangements [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1040795
Comments: 28
Kudos: 370





	Reptile Room

Harry Potter, the youngest and loneliest resident of Number Four Privet Drive, had a secret. And a habit. And a _secret habit._

The secret, which he’d discovered by accident at the tender age of six, was that he could talk to snakes. And not just in the, ‘ramble aloud to a sleeping animal and pretend they were listening’ sort of way. Harry could talk, and the snakes would _talk back._ Some didn’t have much to say, of course, but others like to curl up for a long chat as the boy went about weeding the back garden, which made an otherwise dreary chore that much cheerier.

Then there was the habit, which quite went hand in hand with the talking, in that Harry sometimes asked the nicest snakes if they would take their naps in certain spots at certain times of day. Coiled up in the reclining chair on the back step during sunny afternoons, for example, so that when Aunt Petunia stepped outside with her big sun hat and iced beverage, she took one look and turned around to go right back in.

And finally, of course, Harry had his _secret habit._ Sometimes, every so often, a snake sought him out - ones with sluggishly bleeding cuts from where a hawk had nearly gotten them, or broken teeth from biting something inadvisable, or a smooshed section of tail where a car ran over them - and the boy snuck them inside Number Four. Always straight to his cupboard, and never for very long, because a night or two spent curled up asleep with Harry always, always, meant that the snakes healed up just fine.

_“Thanksss,”_ a young grass snake hissed as he slipped her out the front door one morning, while retrieving the mail.

“You’re welcome,” Harry whispered back, giving her green scales a final stroke before easing the door closed. He returned to the kitchen with a handful of letters, served seconds, and then started cleaning up the utensils he’d used to fix breakfast. Uncle Vernon left for work not too much later, and then Aunt Petunia took Dudley out for a day of shopping, leaving Harry with only the warning to have his chores done by the time they returned home.

Finishing up in the kitchen took no time at all, and then the ten year old stole outside for a few minutes. A dark brown adder, a dusky grey smooth snake, and the little grass snake he’d let out earlier were each already waiting for him.

_“Have you eaten?”_ The adder immediately demanded, even as Harry crouched to let all three of them coil around his hands.

“Not yet,” the boy admitted.

_“Ssstupid humanss,”_ she fussed. _“Feed one hatchling too much, too fasst, while the other wasstess away-”_

“I don’t starve,” Harry insisted, one corner of his mouth curling up in a fond grin. The adder didn’t listen as she kept ranting. Meanwhile, the grass snake wound her way higher and higher in order to curl herself loosely around his neck, while the smooth snake slithered off into the bushes beside the back step in order to retrieve something.

_“Here,”_ the oldest of the serpents called. Harry shuffled over in order to peer past the leaves, smiling when he saw an unopened packet of crisps held in the center of a protective coil. The boy thanked his friends, before ripping open the plastic packaging, and basked in the smugness all three of them radiated while he ate.

It certainly had been worth it, teaching the snakes what he could and couldn’t eat, shifting their habit of bringing him dead mice and lizards to scavenged crisps and dried jerky. _Especially_ on mornings when Harry couldn’t manage to snag a few bites of the breakfast food he actually fixed.

-RR-

When he got to tag along to the zoo for Dudley’s eleventh birthday, Harry took a risk, and smuggled the little grass snake along with him. She sat quite comfortably in the pocket of his ragged trousers, occasionally peeking out to have a look around. When they happened upon the reptile house, she slithered out and up Harry’s hand, wrapping once around his arm where it met the shoulder, in order to have a better view from the collar of his shirt. It turned out to be the best fun they’d had all morning, quietly chatting with the various snakes inside the enclosures. Each one seemed quite wistful at seeing her with Harry, and three even made a point of telling the pair to enjoy the freedom while they could.

That, honestly, made the boy feel a bit bad, parading his friend around in front of a bunch of her cousins, locked away behind glass panels. He made a point of apologizing to the boa constrictor, when they stopped in front of his enclosure, but the big serpent simply shrugged it off. Er- as much as a snake could shrug, anyway.

And then Dudley shoved him, nearly causing Harry to land on and smoosh his hidden passenger, and the sense of unfairness that had been bubbling away inside reared up-

-and every panel of glass in the reptile house vanished.

-RR-

Several hours and a great deal of screaming and crying later, Harry found himself unceremoniously thrown into his cupboard, Uncle Vernon’s furious words ringing in his ears: _There is NO such THING as MAGIC!_

“Except there _is,”_ the boy muttered, carefully extracting the grass snake from his pocket. “Or how else can I explain all of _you?”_

She didn’t seem any worse for wear, thank goodness, but the stress of their return trip immediately sent her wrapping tightly around Harry’s wrist. He didn’t argue, instead hugging both her and his arm close, and curled up unhappily on his cot.

-RR-

The spiders in his cupboard weren’t much, but they managed to keep Harry’s friend going until his imprisonment finally ended, two days later. His chore load unsurprisingly doubled, leaving him with only a sparse few moments to sneak her out onto the back step without any chance to look for the others.

When things finally settled back into the normal routine, a further week down the line, Harry headed outside to go about his gardening duties with ears carefully tuned to the sound of slithering. Sure enough, before long, he heard the telltale whisper of scales against grass, and looked down just in time to see the adder wrap herself firmly around his ankle, the smooth snake not far behind. A flicker of green drew his attention forward again, to where the grass snack wiggled with excitement.

_“We found lotsss,”_ she hissed at him. After taking a quick peek in through the window to make certain none of his relatives were paying attention, Harry followed his friends around to the side of the house- well. Followed the smooth and grass snakes, anyway. The adder absolutely refused to uncoil from his leg.

Hidden beneath the spot where the garden hose hung upon the wall, Harry’s friends had gathered three packets of crisps, two sealed muffins, a bag of scones, and somehow, a reasonably fresh apple without any bite marks in it. He swiftly tucked the sealed food away in the stretched pockets of his over large clothing, before scarfing the apple down in record time. When he returned to his gardening duties, the adder remained latched onto his leg, the smooth snake situated himself to be a makeshift belt, and the little grass snake returned to her place around Harry’s arm and shoulder, just able to peek through his shirt collar. All three refused to let go even when he needed to go back inside, so the boy went through the remainder of his afternoon with his friends close at hand. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon never noticed - Dudley did, at one point, but just as it seemed like he was about to tattle, his eyes went a bit glassy and he told his mother he wanted to watch telly instead.

Harry let out an unnoticed sigh of relief, and the tell-tale pressure in the room dispersed with a subtle _pop!_

-RR-

“The common adder, vipera berus,” Harry whispered. “Could call you Beri, for short.” The adder curled up between his shoulder blades hissed something sleepily. Harry took it for acceptance, and turned the page of his stolen- er, _scavenged_ snake book. Someone had just been going to throw it away, after all, which made swiping it out of the bin fair game, right? That was how he got his other sparse toys and crayons, anyway.

Harry found the page for grass snakes next. “Natrix helvetica - what about Tica?” Draped around his neck so she could watch the turning paper, the little green serpent wiggled happily. “Alright then.”

Reading up about his friends was certainly interesting, even if Harry already knew the sorts of things they ate, and considered them much friendlier than the book warned.

“Coronella austriaca,” he said slowly, after finding the next entry of interest. “Hm. Austri, maybe?” Settled partially beneath the boy, head resting on his folded arms, the smooth snake took a moment before nodding. “Brilliant.”

-RR-

The week of owls and letters put his friends on edge even more than Harry’s relatives, and after it ended, after he met Hagrid and learned about magic and Hogwarts and Diagon Alley, Harry made sure to apologize as best he could. Smuggling them up to his new place in Dudley’s second bedroom went easily enough, though the introduction to Hedwig caused three scaly bodies to tighten their grips on him.

“I don’t know if you’ve eaten snakes before, but no more, alright girl?” Harry slowly stroked his owl’s feathers with one hand, holding up Tica with the other. “They’re the only friends I’ve ever had, okay?”

Hedwig fluffed out her feathers, giving him a fierce look. But then she leaned forward and stretched, gently nibbling a line down the grass snake’s back. Ticah stiffened at first, before relaxing at the scritching. Austri cautiously slithered out along Harry’s arm to join her after a while, though Beri remained resolutely looped around the boy’s neck and refused to budge

_“Bird,”_ she insisted. _“Nice bird, but ssstill BIRD.”_

“Yeah, alright.”

-RR-

Some part of Harry irrationally refused to accept the idea of leaving his friends behind on September First. The Dursleys made such a big deal about the gardening service they’d hired to replace him, after all, and what if whoever came in to mow the lawn ran over green scales hidden in the grass? Or chased off a serpent merely sunning on the back porch? Or deliberately took a rake to the first sign of fangs?

No, no, much better for all three to come with him. They’d be safe at a magical school, and there was plenty of room beneath Harry’s new robes, anyway.

-RR-

Ron Weasley, for all he seemed like a decent bloke, still got a bit green in the face when Harry brought out his friends for an introduction. “Bloody hell,” the other boy said. “You’re a Parselmouth!”

“A what?”

“A- a wizard who talks to snakes! That’s, that’s pretty Dark, mate. Or at least, only Dark wizards can do it.”

Harry shrank back into his seat a bit, drawing his arms in close to hide his friends from view again. “Oh.”

“I’m not saying _you’re_ one,” Ron added hastily. “Just- maybe don’t let a lot of people know, yeah? They might jump to the wrong idea, y’know.” He stared for a long moment at the peep of a green snout sticking up over Harry’s wrist. “...well, s’better than spiders, I guess.”

“They eat spiders,” Harry carefully offered. “My, erm, my old room had a bunch of big ones in the corners.”

The bit of green came back, but at least Ron looked more relieved than scared. “Good for them, then. Good for them.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year, y'all. Sorry I've been awful quiet the last few months, it's... been a rough winter so far. I can't promise updates for any of my multi-chaptered fics any time soon, but I do promise I'm trying to put in some work on each of them. Just, be patient, yeah?  
> -Tri


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